Perihelion
by The Quiller
Summary: /He smiles and smiles until his heart runs dry, because everyone else seems to have forgotten how./ A thousand first-steps between being a boy and being a man. Gino-centric.


. . .

**PERIHELION**

part ( i )

_If you can wait and not be tired by waiting,  
>Or, being lied to, yet don't deal in lies,<br>Or being hated don't give way to hating,  
>And yet don't look too good, nor talk too wise<em>

_-Rudyard Kipling_

. . .

Lord Damon Weinberg is the kind of man that most people will subconsciously obey without knowing why. His face is always an unreadable mask of calm, and his blue eyes are sharp enough to cut like knives. He is many things a Britannian noble should always be, and thus, equally many things that a father should never be. It takes Gino a long time to understand, and even longer to forgive.

Gino's first and last life-changing conversations with the man both take place over a scratchy phone line. During the first, he is five years old and convinced he is about to die. During the last, he is older, wiser, and equally convinced he is about to die, albeit he is a lot calmer about it.

Many years later, he will find this both funny and unsurprising in the most heartbreaking way.

The first time he ever earned his father's undivided attention was a hostage situation.

. . .

He spends his childhood in a beautiful mansion surrounded by lush countryside. The sky is wide and the horizon is endless, so he has endless room to dream. He lives with all the discovery and delight that only children ever possess, trailing laughter in his eyes and sunlight in his hair everywhere he goes. The world is his canvas and imagination is his brush. He has everything a boy can ask for.

But sometimes, he wishes for more.

His father's visits come only once or twice a year. On those rare occasions, Damon Weinberg always has something more important to do or someone more important to talk to. Five-year-old Gino treasures every glimpse of the man. He sneaks out of his room and flattens his ear against the doors of his father's study late at night, because even though he can't hear the words, just listening to that calm and commanding voice makes his little-boy-heart swell with fierce pride. Even as his eyelids grow heavier and heavier, he will try his hardest to stay awake, because there was no telling how long it would be before he'll hear his father's voice again.

Yet every time, he always wakes up tucked back in bed and his father has vanished like a fading dream in the morning light.

It's not surprising, but every time, the feeling of abandonment is still achingly fresh. Hope is a stupidly stubborn sickness.

He learns quickly, however, to swallow his disappointed tears and smiles with all the might of his cast-iron heart. Mother cries enough for the both of them. She doesn't think he knows, but he does. There isn't much he can do about it except pour as many smiles as he can into her empty eyes, because her strained silence and thin laughter can only mean that she's running out of smiles of her own. He doesn't want to find out what happens when she runs out, so she can have his extras. He has a lot to spare.

In the meantime, he diligently crosses the days off his calendar every morning and marks his height on the bedpost every night. His nanny tells him that father goes away to fight evil armies of evil men, so every inch that Gino grows is another inch closer to being big enough to join the fight. When he's all grown up, he's going to help his father defeat the evil armies once and for all, and then father will be able to come home for good, Mother will stop crying, and everyone will live happily ever after.

In his lonely house of dreams, he paints his fairytale.

. . .

The car comes out of nowhere on his way home from riding practice, slamming them off the road, and there's a flurry of guns and screaming and panic that doesn't belong in his story. His world is small, packed within the confines of a beautiful mansion filled with familiar characters he knows and loves. He doesn't know how to deal with these dangerous interlopers stretching his world into all kinds of grotesque and horrifying shapes. They drag him away from the sunlight and smiles and lock him away in a tiny room where the once endless horizon shrinks to the span of a single dusty window. It takes all the courage his little-boy-heart can muster to ask them to let him go. It's a silly question, of course, but Gino is a silly kid, and he does silly things.

They refuse, which is expected.

Then they shoot his nanny, which is not. Bang-bang. Just like that. She dies with her brains splattered on the wall. Half of her head is _gone_.

They threaten to shoot him too if he doesn't shut up, so he clamps his mouth shut and doesn't even dare to sob.

He has been handcuffed to this chair for what feels like forever. His wrists hurt. His head hurts. When he looks at the blood on wall and the body on the floor, his heart hurts too. But no matter how much he wants to burst into tears, if he starts crying now, he doesn't think he'll be able to stop. So instead, he thinks of sunshine and laughter with all his might, because his world is sorely lacking in both right now. As the minutes blur into hours, and the hours blur into eternity, he wishes that Mother hadn't gotten sick and that Father hadn't gone away, because he really doesn't want to be alone.

His kidnappers look so angry. Their eyes never leave him for long, and they look at him as if they'd love to mail him to his parents, piece by bloody piece. So when one of the men suddenly approaches and reaches for something in his pocket, Gino can only pray that whatever happens will at least happen quickly.

The man only shoves a ratty sheet of paper in his face. Gino is proud of his reading level, but the paper is full of words and phrases Gino doesn't understand, like '_release of all non-combatant POWs'_ and_ 'proportional restitutions to all injured parties'_. The words he does understand – such as _'in return for your son'_ – only reinforce the sinking feeling that somehow, this is all his fault_._ He memorizes everything it at gunpoint whether he understands it or not. One of the men strikes him each time he stumbles over the words he doesn't know, but he forges onwards despite his dizziness. By the time he finally gets through the entire paragraph, his mouth tastes like someone filled it with iron and his head feels like it someone stuffed with cotton. They make him recite it three more times before they're satisfied with his rendition, and leave him a blissful minute of respite before returning with a strange, box-like machine.

It's a phone, Gino realizes, as they wedge the receiver against his cheek. They don't tell him who they're going to call; they do make it very clear that he is to recite the speech and _only_ the speech, or else there will be consequences.

But when the line picks up before even the first ring and his father's strong voice answers on the other end, Gino's so relieved that all his pent up panic bursts out and he forgets the speech completely. He doesn't even know what he's saying anymore as he babbles himself hoarse. Somehow, everything will be okay now, because every five-year-old believes in their parents' invincibility. He presses his ear flat against the receiver and draws strength from that familiar calm, deep voice, even as the handcuffs scrape bloody edges against his thin, bird-like wrists in this awkward position. It's all he can do to keep from bursting into tears.

"_Gino,_" his father says quietly at first, but he just keeps babbling. His father frowns and barks in a much firmer voice, cutting him off mid-sentence, "_Gino. You do not have time to cry. Tell me what they told you to say."_

He swallows, sucking in a gulp of air, but his mouth seems to be on autopilot, churning out an incoherent torrent of words that he cannot stop.

One of the kidnappers runs out of patience and fires a deafening shot just past Gino's ear. Immediately, the boy goes deathly still and stares at the smoking bullet hole next to his head with blank eyes. Unbeknownst to Gino, his father goes equally still on the other end of the line, because no parent can fully retain their composure as someone shoots at their child, not even a man like Damon Weinberg.

"_Quickly, before they run out of patience with your foolishness!"_

The harsh command snaps Gino's attention back to the voice in the receiver immediately. He is confused – he has never heard his father speak with anything but the utmost composure. His father's callous words crackle from the speaker, "_You are a Britannian. You are a Weinberg. Cease your incessant babble and do as you were told. My son will **not** die for his own cowardice. Speak. **Now**!"_

Shock. For a split second, the boy can't believe his ears. He cannot see his father's expression of haggard anxiety on the other end of the phone. All he can hear is his father, his _hero_, siding with the evil men who killed his nanny and are probably going to kill him too. So this is betrayal. So this is desertion. His father's mantle of omnipotence tears right down the middle. For a split second, every ounce of sweet admiration twists into bitter disappointment, and his little-boy-heart isn't big enough to feel so much fury and so much fear at the same time. Something packed tight inside the solid iron core of his soul unravels into emptiness. The one person he believed in no matter what does not deserve his faith; one of childhood's core beliefs is brutally stripped away.

And suddenly, Gino isn't angry or scared anymore.

It takes him a few heartbeats to find his voice.

"Okay," he answers simply, and regurgitates the horrible speech word-for-word without a single stumble, not even on the words '_your son'_.

And just as he says the last word of the last sentence, the only window in the room shatters like divine lightning as the man holding him at gunpoint drops to the floor with a gurgle and a spray of red. Seconds later, a deafening roll of thunder splinters the door in an explosion of boots and flashing metal. A one-eyed man dressed in a shining white and gold uniform blazes into the room swinging the mightiest sword Gino has ever seen, tearing through the hapless kidnappers before they even have time to aim and fire. There isn't enough time to understand what's going on; he can hardly believe his eyes as is. A living, breathing fantasy knight is vanquishing the bad guys with almost disdainful ease. Everything is over in less than a minute, but for Gino, every second has been etched into his memory and will be replayed again and again in the days to come.

"Amateurs," the knight mutters with disgust as he kicks the gun away from a corpse just in case. "Did they think Britannia had no countermeasures for this kind of foolishness?" The man pauses to make double sure that every threat in the vicinity has been eliminated before eyeing the beaten up little boy handcuffed to a chair in the middle of the room. "Hold still."

A thrill runs through Gino as he watches the sword rise over his head, but the downward swing misses him entirely and shears through the handcuffs with a mighty clang. He scrambles out of that hateful chair the second he's free, but his legs buckle underneath him from hours of sitting still. The knight grunts and hauls Gino over his shoulder like a sack of potatoes despite the boy's feeble protests. The rest of the escape plays out like a dream, as hallways and stairs he doesn't remember seeing on the way in blur past his eyes. They pass through one more hallway and one more door, and quite suddenly, his lungs suck in a brilliantly cold breath of fresh air and his eyes drink in stars of an endless horizon. He chokes on something that just might be freedom.

Behind the gleaming shields of the police perimeter stand two familiar silhouettes in the moonlight.

"Mama. Papa," he cries, and the knight carrying him understands the unspoken plea in his words. The man sets him down so he can run to them on his own two feet.

His weary legs threaten to buckle, but the sound of his little-boy-heart thundering in his chest gives him strength. He starts out at a walk, then a trot, and then a flat-out run into his mother's waiting arms. Her face is pale and her usually perfect makeup is smeared with tears, but to Gino, she has never smiled so beautifully.

"Oh, Gino, my _brave baby boy_," she sobs, hugging him tight and smoothing his ruffled hair. "Thank god, I was so worried. You're safe now, baby. You're safe."

He has to take slow, shuddering breaths and blink away the wetness in his eyes as he burrows into his mother's embrace and smells the comfortingly familiar scent of her perfume. For just a split second, he wants to break down and bawl like the five-year-old child he is.

But he looks up over his mother's shoulder and his father looks down at him. Two pairs of knife-sharp blue eyes lock and for a second, just a second, they are equals.

Then the wonder of all wonders happens. His father's hand, that warm, strong hand that he has always reached for, comes down on top of his head in a gentle pat. Almost too quietly for Gino to hear, his father says, "You were brave. I am proud of you, son."

Only then does Gino finally let the tears roll down his face; they taste salty and bitter and sweet all at the same time. He has survived. He is alive. Something precious has been lost, but something precious has also been gained. His father is proud of him. Everything is forgiven. The unraveled emptiness inside him coils back together with unadulterated joy, and packs itself tightly into a shining new resolve.

In the last few moments before he blacks out from sheer exhaustion, Gino swears in his heart of hearts that he will never be scared again. He swears to be strong, stronger so that he never finds himself at the mercy of evil men again. Not just for his father's sake, but also for his own. He wants to be the defender, the rescuer, and the avenger, instead of being the defended, the rescued, and the avenged. The story he writes with his life with be his own, no one else's.

When he wakes up, his father is gone, like a fading dream in the morning light, but his new dream shines bright and strong, and he smiles with all the might of his cast-iron heart.

. . .

_Author's Note:_

_Well, this is the first chapter of Perihelion! This seriously started out a 100-word drabble, I swear, but then a plot bunny ate my brain._

_We're looking at ten plus chapters or so worth of stuff, so buckle in for a ride. This story is going to cover everything from Gino's imaginary family history, to the Japanese maid that his canon backstory mentions, to what happens between his running away from home and becoming the Knight of Three, and finally through the canon events from Gino's point of view. Plenty of canon characters will show up, a few that everyone expects, and probably a few that'll come as a surprise._

_There will be action! Adventure! Romance galore! Beware the outright creative indulgence of a Gino fan girl._


End file.
